10 Ways to promote a business
As a business owner, you want to reach as many potential customers as possible. It is therefore important to increase your brand awareness. In what ways can you promote a company these days? Should you only focus on online solutions, or also on offline marketing? In this article you can read more about ways to promote a company and thus increase your turnover.
Opt for a mix of online and offline
Nowadays, the focus is often on promoting a company online. Where the perfect solution lies in a mix of online and offline marketing methods. Although almost everyone has access to an internet connection, an offline marketing method often appears more reliable to people. On the internet you have to deal with a particularly strong competition. In recent years, the number of companies with a website has exploded. There are also websites of private individuals or internet agencies.
Later in this article, different online and offline marketing methods will be discussed. To set up a good marketing campaign, it is important to identify your target group. The better your image of this target group is, the easier it will be to reach them. In general, people need five to seven touch points to fully trust your company and make a purchase. Try to think in advance how this customer journey will run. Where does a customer first come across your name, how do you lure a potential customer to the next contact moment, and so on.
Marketing inside and outside your office building
When you rent or have bought an office building, this is the first opportunity to promote your company. For example, you can choose to hang a large logo of your company on the wall, you can use cups and pens with your logo, and so on. There is a good chance that people will take these pens home, or take them to a customer. If they leave the pen here, several people will get their hands on the pen with your logo. In this way you increase the brand awareness of your organization. You could also hand out these pens during a company visit to a school.
You can place large flagpoles outside your office building. Choose flags in the house style of your organization, for example with a logo, your company name or the address of your website. With large flags you could also state the services you offer on the flag. If your company is located in a collective building, it will usually be more difficult to place a flagpole in front of the building. You can opt for a small nameplate around the entrance. Discuss this with the landlord of the property! By providing flags or a nameplate, passers-by can no longer ignore your company. The chance increases that they will take a look at your website to see what you offer.
Promoting your company during a network meeting or fair
Network meetings or fairs will be organized regularly in the vicinity of your company. It may be worthwhile to visit such an event. It offers you the opportunity to meet other business people, to start a conversation with others to come up with new ideas, and so on. In addition, at company fairs there are often a large number of potential customers who you can address in different ways. For example, place an employee of your company at the entrance of the exhibition to receive people personally. You can also address people around your stand to tell them more about services and products. A third option is to hand out business gifts during the fair. Think of the previously described printed pens, a nice mug or yo-yo, and so on. This way, they come into contact with the name of your company again at home. It makes it relatively easy to get five to seven contact moments.
Ensure a high position in the search results
You also want to stand out online as a company! One of the things to pay attention to is the use of Search Engine Optimization. In Dutch we also call this search engine optimization or SEO for short. The idea of this is to improve the position of your website in the search results. The higher you rank in these search results, the greater the number of potential customers that will see your company name. Often, search engine users only look at the first three to five results. The chance that they will find what they are looking for among these results is very high. As a result, the rest of the search results will not be looked at.
SEO can be used in different ways. For example, it is important to regularly add new content to your website, you need to build a link profile for your website, and so on. Fortunately, a lot of information about SEO can be found on the internet. There are various free and paid tools that can help you with this.
SEA as an alternative to SEO in the short term
Before you will actually see a change in the ranking of your website, you will soon be a few months further. A good alternative to SEO is therefore SEA. This stands for Search Engine Advertising, which means that you buy advertising space within a search engine. By buying this advertising space, you are assured that you are at the top of the search engine for certain keywords. Before you choose these keywords, it is wise to perform a keyword analysis. You can leave this to an external party, or do it yourself using a free tool on the internet.
Keep in mind that SEA entails relatively high costs. In addition, it does not structurally ensure better positions in the search results. For this reason it is important not to focus on SEA blindly, but to use it mainly for the short term. You score in the long term with SEO. In the long run, you will need fewer advertisements in order to still achieve a good turnover.
Be active on social media
A third way to get your business noticed online is to use social media. Start a conversation with your audience on social media such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. For example, post a question or statement and inquire about the opinion of your followers. The greater the interaction with the audience, the faster the promotion of your company will go. Followers of your own followers will also be able to follow these conversations. Chances are, they'll take a look at your social media pages to see what you have to offer them.